We took a deep dive into how this election cycles will affect ecommerce and SaaS advertisers.
Remember that you can go into Varos’ app to get accurate/real-time benchmarks and insights similar to these but for your brand vs. your category. These insights were actually taken directly from the Varos by pulling the date filter back to 2020 and 2019.
The full 24 page report for August can be found at our newsletter, the DTC Index .
Open Secrets estimates that $14.4B was spent on political races in 2020, more than double the spending of 2016. More than $1B of this was spent on the Democratic party presidential primary. Generally every election cycle sees significant outlays during this portion of the process, so it’s not surprising that according to Ad Impact, spending YTD is 1/2 what it was in 2020 ($1.4B in 2020 vs $716M in 2024).
One stark contrast is in the allocation of ad dollars between the two parties. Given our unique focus on understanding the impact to our industry, this difference could be quite consequential to consider. Trump and pro-Trump groups have seemingly abandoned Meta (~6% of total budget) and have focused their spend heavily into television.
One additional interesting data point is that both candidates use the majority of their Meta spend to drive direct responding fundraising efforts. Meta continues to be the king of getting consumers to pull out their wallets.
Looking at Meta, 2020 was a strong year for Meta from a CPM perspective (compared to the previous year). Then coming into the election CPMs started to rise significantly, going from -20% YoY in June to +13% YoY in November. About 45% of advertisers experienced CPM increases of over 10% YoY in October and November of 2020.
Cost per Purchase followed a similar trend, getting more expensive as the elections neared. But 2020 was such a strong year that it was able to stay on a net-improvement from the year before, despite CPMs increasing.
Google also was having a strong year in terms of performance in 2020, and also saw cost increases nearing the election. Google went from being 10% lower YoY on CPM to +3% in November. In fact, nearly 50% of Google advertisers saw increases of CPM YoY of greater than 10% in November.
Google’s cost per purchase saw similar trends.
Overall, the elections had a real impact on costs in the months leading up to it. That said, Meta and Google have since diversified further, increasing the commonly used ad format types available (i.e., Reels, Advantage+, Stories, Shorts, etc.) and have been able to scale ad revenue without having deterioration on an advertiser’s performance.
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Bottom line: I’m recommending Varos to you all because it’s FREE (for now) and it’s already added a ton of value for myself and my clients.Check it out 👇
I would definitely recommend checking out Varos. With Varos you can easily see how your peers are performing, for free. You get insights into not only TikTok Ads benchmarks, but also similar data for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and more. #VarosAmbassador
Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend
With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.
Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.
I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.
One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.
Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇
I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!
This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc
Bottom line: I’m recommending Varos to you all because it’s FREE (for now) and it’s already added a ton of value for myself and my clients.Check it out 👇
I would definitely recommend checking out Varos. With Varos you can easily see how your peers are performing, for free. You get insights into not only TikTok Ads benchmarks, but also similar data for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and more. #VarosAmbassador
Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend
With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.
Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.
I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.
One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.
Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇
I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!
This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc
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